Nearly everything progressives say about neoconservative interventionism abroad applies to their own preferred policies at home

By
A. Barton Hinkle

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
There are few things as mystifying as the dissonance of modern American
progressivism. And nowhere is that dissonance more apparent than on the
bright line dividing foreign and domestic policy.

For the past eight years, the dominant strain of progressive thought
railed against neoconservative foreign interventionism. It abhorred the
use of coercive hard power  military might  to achieve ostensibly
desirable goals such as the spread of democracy. Progressives found the
promotion of American values through brute force arrogant and even
cruel.

Throughout the Bush years, America-the-bully was a leitmotif. "American
Bully Strikes Back," was the headline on an October 2001 piece in Salon
about the war in Afghanistan. "Leaders who can persuade and convince
fare better than those who bully and abuse," wrote H.D.S. Greenway in a
2005 review of Taming American Power, in which he denounced
"neoconservative theories of social engineering." Likewise, The New York
Times denounced "threat and brute force" in the 2007 editorial,
"Bullying Iran."

In a 2008 piece in The Nation about candidate Barack Obama's foreign
policy, Robert Dreyfuss observed that "U.S. involvement abroad, even
when well-intentioned, is perceived on the receiving end as heavy-handed
meddling." He even found cause for alarm in the fact that some of
Obama's advisers "are strong advocates of using U.S. military force to
intervene in cases of severe violations of human rights, including
genocide."

The progressive notion that American power projection is problematic on
moral grounds and dubious on empirical ones remains strong today. In a
pre-Christmas piece on The Huffington Post, Tom Englehardt recalls that
in 2001 the Bush administration "had expansive dreams and gargantuan
plans." The neocons were "desperately in love with the U.S. military and
complete romantics about what it could do." Alas, "in the biggest
dreams" we find "the largest miscalculations." In a same-day piece for
The American Prospect, Ann Friedman despairs at the idea that American
firepower can be a force for good in the world: "To me, the answer is
tragically apparent: It doesn't matter whether U.S. military
intervention can be a force for humanitarianism because, in Afghanistan,
it never has been and won't become one."

Beyond American shores, progressives much prefer Joseph Nye's doctrine
of "soft power"  which Foreign Affairs recently summed up as "one
country's ability to get other countries to do want what it wants, in
contrast to ordering or forcing others to do what it wants."

Yet turn the subject to domestic policy, and what happens? Progressives
eagerly embrace the use of coercive hard power to achieve their aims.
Force industry to adopt a cumbersome cap-and-trade policy to reduce
carbon emissions? Check. Force the country to adopt a health care
"public option"? Check. Threaten people with fines and even prison to
impose an individual mandate? Check.

So much for the concern about "social engineering" and well-intentioned
but "heavy-handed meddling." When it comes to domestic policy,
progressives are just as eager as neocons are to embrace "expansive
dreams" and "gargantuan plans." Just as hopelessly romantic about what
the threat of force can achieve. And just as arrogant about the
rightness of wielding it. (Writing on the Web site Open Left, for
example, Adam Bink defends the individual insurance mandate thusly: "I
don't care if people don't want health insurance . . . .Pay up, folks.")

Well, progressives might say, lower carbon-dioxide emissions and
universal health care are greatly to be desired, and they cannot be
achieved without government compulsion. What's more, progressives do not
see themselves as cramming policies down an unwilling public's throat.
They see themselves as rescuing the public from the bad guys: corporate
polluters and greedy insurance companies. Fair enough. But by the same
token, neoconservatives don't see themselves as bullies, either. They
also see themselves as rescuers  stopping genocide and liberating the
oppressed from the yoke of tyrants such as Saddam Hussein and the
Taliban.

Progressives might contend there is another big difference: They are
only trying to impose their will on their fellow Americans, while
neoconservatives want to impose their will on non-Americans. But this
line of reasoning is fraught with snares.

For one thing, it is not clear why we owe the personal wishes of our
fellow citizens less deference than the preferences of foreigners,
rather than more. For another, it would seem to suggest Jim Crow laws
might have greater claim on our allegiance than, say, an international
arms-control or climate treaty. Third, many progressives ground their
arguments for health care reform in universal considerations: "Health
care is a human right," as Amnesty International USA, the Vermont
Workers' Center, the General Secretary of the United Methodist Church,
and many other progressives say. But if justice permits the use of force
to uphold universal values, then arbitrary national boundaries shouldn't
stand in the way of those universals. Don't progressives otherwise favor
cosmopolitanism over narrow nationalism?

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